On October 31, 2014, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) responded to an August 2014 petition from the American Coatings Association (ACA) and other trade associations to extend the June 1, 2015, regulatory deadline in OSHA’s Hazard Communication Standard (HCS) for updating labels and Safety Data Sheets (SDS). Although OSHA denied the ACA petition, it did agree to provide formulated product manufacturers with relief from the June 1, 2015, deadline in the form of an enforcement policy letter and a compliance directive rather than reopening the rule itself. ACA and eight other trade associations petitioned OSHA to extend the HCS compliance date for chemical product formulators to June 1, 2017, arguing that compliance with the deadline for many manufacturers of formulated products has been virtually impossible because manufacturers of raw materials are not required to provide SDSs that conform to the new standard until June 1, 2015. Because formulators may not receive updated SDS from their suppliers until June 1, 2015, ACA argued that its members “cannot develop accurate hazard classifications and produce complete labels and SDSs for their formulated products that are compliant with the new HCS classification scheme in time to meet the June 1, 2015 deadline.” In the October 31 letter, OSHA stated that it will exercise its enforcement discretion in cases where a regulated entity has performed due diligence and made a good faith effort to obtain the necessary information to comply with the June 1, 2015, deadline but is unable to do so. To this end, OSHA stated that regulated entities should document all efforts to obtain the required information, including attempts to contact their suppliers, and efforts to find other suppliers and to find relevant data themselves. This same enforcement discretion would apply to distributors that can demonstrate they received the hazard communication materials under this policy. ACA states that at an October 31, 2014, meeting OSHA confirmed that SDSs and labels do not have to be compliant with the new HCS requirements on June 1, 2015, so long as a company can demonstrate good faith efforts to comply. OSHA also stated that enforcement officers would consider the multitude of steps needed to create an SDS and label in determining what a reasonable time frame for compliance is. Based on the letter from OSHA and the discussions that occurred during the meeting, a company may avail itself of OSHA’s enforcement discretion and not be in compliance on June 1, 2015, if a company can show its labels and data sheets are in compliance with current version of the HCS, the company is making good faith efforts to comply with the upcoming June 1, 2015, deadline and can demonstrate that because of circumstances beyond their control, they cannot comply by that date, and the company can provide a plan of implementation that will put them in compliance with the new HCS requirements within a reasonable period of time following June 1, 2015.
